The Physics of Trust
If trust is the invisible currency of a business, are we designing how it's created — or just hoping it shows up?
I've thought about trust throughout my career, usually in the context of designing and building digital products. What makes someone buy from you? What happens when something goes wrong? Why do some companies recover quickly while others lose customers forever?
Working with Coc00n, a cybersecurity company protecting high-net-worth individuals, made me think about trust much more deeply. In that world, trust isn't just important — it's the product. Clients are buying confidence, discretion, judgement and protection long before they ever use an app.
We often talk about how trust feels, but I started to think: how does trust actually behave? My son is studying physics at school, and he's always explaining the underlying laws of how the universe works. As he does, he keeps finding more rules underneath — the hidden ones behind what you're seeing. I think businesses have invisible systems that behave in the same way. Trust felt like one of them.
If that's true, then perhaps trust isn't just a feeling. It could be the outcome of thousands of interactions that obey underlying patterns. I think trust is created, transferred, strengthened, weakened, repaired and compounded according to a set of laws that we rarely stop to investigate.
That's the thinking behind this Product Note. It's an attempt to investigate it.